Hallowe'en Scene
by Gomro Morskopp
Summary: COMPLETE. Sequel to "Revelations in Green and Black." What evil experiment in the Himalayas is using the same mysterious energy that turned Shego into a demi-god five years before? Can Kim and Ron Stoppable stop it before a new horror is unleashed?
1. Chapter 1

DISCLAIMER: Nothing from _Kim Possible_ belongs to me, though I misuse it all at will. The Cthulhu Mythos doesn't belong to me either, but it suffers as well. Soundtrack for writing this story: _Victims of the Modern Age_ by Star One/_Sitra Ahra_ by Therion. Shuffle play is a wonderful thing.

* * *

There was a time, thought Electronique, when Hallowe'en was a day to be dreaded. When other children were out trick-or-treating, having fun, she had only watched through the window of their small house, wishing she was out there with them.

"_Yvonne, come away from zere." Mother's sharp, staccato voice. Everything about her had been sharp and staccato. "Eet ees time to pray. Pray espechially for zose children out zere. Their parents don't love them enough to teach them abaout God. Their zouls are in mortahl danger, taking part in this devil's holy day." _

Then she would be forced to join in mother's all-night prayers. Mother insisted that her little girl grow up prim and proper and pious.

She never knew her father.

"Religion," she growled, only half to herself. "I hate eet."

"Vhat?" Professor Dementor was still hovering over the vat like some sort of ominous Macy's Parade balloon, adjusting the seven dish antennae that surrounded it and its thick, black contents. "_Vhat_ are you hating, liebling?"

"Eet's nothing. Just thinking aout lowd." She had no belief in the supernatural. Science was all. Science had made her a living battery, a human dynamo. Science had fueled all of Dementor's evil endeavors, down through the years. It was practically inevitable that they would meet; less inevitable, but no less real, was the attraction they had immediately felt toward each other.

As a team, as a couple, they would achieve what they had failed at alone: world domination.

She looked down at the scribbled sketch in the book she held, comparing it with the massive biochemical device before her. The formula would only work on Hallowe'en night. Not because of evil spirits or the devil's dominion. Because of the ten-dimensional vril force emanating from Aldebaran. A force that manifested itself on Earth on that night alone.

Science, not superstition.

She wondered what 'tekeli-li' meant; the gibberish word was nervously scrawled all around the picture. Wondered what the author's handwriting had looked like before she lost her mind.

It didn't matter. "Move ze third anteenna just a leetle to ze left."

Sloppily bound, photocopied from the hand-written original, the book was the key to so many scientific secrets. The babble about _unguentum sabbati, _the flying ointment of witchcraft legend, had concealed a cheap synthesis of the rare anti-gravity element topsyturvium. The nonsense about "the reversed angles of Tagh-Clatur" held the answer to portable teleportation devices.

The belts she and Dementor wore were the fruit of those discoveries.

And then there were the other things, the things that made it so hazardous. There were only a few copies of it in the world, most of them in the hands of dangerous cults, worshippers of the Great Old Ones who had given the nameless book a title: _Revelations in Green and Black_.

Again superstition obscured the scientific truth. Those terrors were not gods to worship or demons to command. They were something else entirely.

Five years earlier Drakken's sidekick-turned-lover Shego had somehow contacted the Old Ones, using the nearly limitless power they gave her to allow them access to this universe, almost destroying the world in the process. No one knew exactly why their invasion had failed, but their abrupt departure had left the snarky, self-assured superwoman a broken invalid. Powerless. Hopelessly insane, afraid of her own shadow.

Electronique smiled. She hated Shego almost as much as she hated her mother.

"I _know_ that smiling," said Dementor playfully, spinning slowly in the air as he tinkered with the antenna. "That is the smiling of der _pleasant_ thoughts. Und they are-?"

"I never thaught I would evar say this, but we owe Shego a lot. After all, eet ees her crazy book that has given us all zis." She had written it in the asylum. As therapy. Hidden in her delirious drivel was the colossal knowledge of the Great Old Ones, the secrets of creation.

And annihilation.

It had taken them nearly a year to distill the logic from the lunacy, but it was there. Soon they would control a form of life never before seen on their world. According to the _Revelations_, they were originally created as servants of the Elder Things, otherworldly opponents of the Great Old Ones' leader Cthulhu.

Elder Things, Elder Gods, Ancient Ones, Great Old Ones: a confusing mess, to be sure. Only a maniac could make sense of it. They had no intention of trying. The _ekitainingen_, the liquid creatures would be enough.

"Ach," grunted Dementor, finally descending, "der process, it is in place. Der vril accumulators, they are making vith der focusing. Very shortly ve vill be putting, ooh, such a HURTING on ALL the things ve HATE!"

The antennae hummed an Armageddon locust-song; the solution in the immense cauldron began heatlessly to boil.

Electronique nodded, satisfied. "Ze Stoppables will be ze first on ze list. Ze whole family, Stoppables, Possibles, the lot of zem. Weeth them aout of ze way, absolutally nathing can stop us." She set the book down just as the alarms began to squall.

Someone had invaded the lair. Someone was on to their plan.

Someone was going to be very, very sorry.

"Go," she said. She stood up, electricity crackling all around her. " I weel guard ze experiment. Een less than an hour we weel have our army."

"Whoever it is, they vill not be LIVINK TO SEE IT! I shall TREAT them to our latest TRICK!" Like a virtuoso pianist, Dementor played a silent tune on the keyboard of his belt.

And vanished.

* * *

There was a time, thought Kim, dodging the blasts from Dementor's robot guards, when Hallowe'en was about costumes and candy. About running with Ron through the Middleton streets, laughing at each new mask they saw. A time when danger was make-believe and fear was fun.

It was Hallowe'en, and things were very different now. The costume she wore was a cybertronic battlesuit; the danger both to herself and to the world was very real.

There was no time for fear.

_The familiar signal had beeped unexpectedly; she had almost ignored it. The Kimmunicator had been silent for nearly a year. Virtually all her foes were either behind bars or reformed; even her most relentless nemesis, Dr. Drakken, was Dr. Drew Lipsky now, famous for the invention of the telepathic amplifier, the device that had revolutionized the treatment of mental illness. _

_She frowned, thinking about Drakken and Shego, and keyed the Kimmunicator. "What's up, Wade?"_

"_What? No 'sitch?'"_

"_OK, 'what's the sitch.' Happy?"_

"_We're certainly snippy this evening."_

"_Tell me there's more to this than evaluating my snippiness. We're taking Cinnabar on her first trick-or-treat run tonight. Red Riding Hood."_

"_You might want to reconsider that. I've got a strange energy signature coming from somewhere in the Himalayas. The same energy I found right before Shego went all demi-god on us." _

_A sharp pain shot through her back, across her ribs. Mind over matter, she thought; the wounds are healed, but the scars remain. "You're kidding." _

"_Wish I was. It's not her; she's with Drak – Dr. Lipsky. Already checked."_

"_Was there – any change?"_

"_He couldn't talk long. Said Hallowe'en was particularly" – he swallowed – " hard for her." There was a deep sadness in his eyes. After the Lorwardian invasion, after the UN pardon, after the courtship and marriage, the whole world had seen Shego and Drakken as heroes. Then she had almost killed Kim, implicated Drakken in the plot, and tried to turn those other things, those monsters loose on the world. "Whatever that means. Anyway, the only villains I can't account for are Dementor and Electronique; they're more than capable of something like this."_

"_Yeah." She considered the situation in glum silence. "We'd be better off if it was Shego." Ron entered the room, their little daughter holding his hand, dressed in her Red Riding Hood costume, her eyes filled with a child's excitement. _

"_Call my parents." She barely concealed the anger in her voice. This wasn't fair. "They'll have to look after Cinnabar. Maybe the tweebs will take her out trick-or-treating."_

_The child looked from her mother to her father, not understanding._

_Ron spluttered, found his voice. "Kim, we've been planning this all month! We can't just –"_

"_Tell them we've — we've got a mission." _

She wanted to get this over with quickly and get back home. No one but Shego knew what had truly transpired on that awful day five years before, and she had been left powerless and insane by the experience. If Dementor and Electronique were trying to repeat that event, they had to be stopped before it went any further. She hadn't faced any of the things Shego called the Great Old Ones, but Ron had. Two of them, one far more terrible than the other.

He didn't like to talk about it.

She spun, twisted in the air, leaped from wall to wall, luring the deadly robots into lethal crossfires. No doubt Ron was in battle somewhere else in the immense mountain lair. Since he had mastered the mystical monkey power, more than one villain had learned that he was quite able to hold his own against any enemy.

_Almost as good as I am_, she thought, coldly smiling as the last two machines blasted each other. _And I don't need monkey fu to work my magic._

Without warning Dementor was before her, his laser pistol three inches from her startled eyes. "Ach! You can my _roboter_ destroy, Fräulein Possible," snarled the evil scientist, "but your LUCK, IT ALL IS RUN OUT!"

Kim threw herself backward, put the forcefield up just in time; even so, the blast slammed her against the far wall. She shook her head, momentarily dazed, as the small stocky man came at her, weapon drawn. "Nice of you to be bringing me THAT SELF-HEALING, SPRING-STEPPING BATTLESUIT!"

"Only thing I've got for you is a punch in the mouth." She catapulted over him; he fired wildly, his shots blasting holes in the ceiling. "And it's _Fräu __Stoppable _now." A solid kick would bring him down – but the madman was gone, and she staggered forward, almost falling. Before she could regain her balance, a ray came from over her shoulder, singeing the hair on her head.

She turned to see Dementor hovering almost ten feet in the air above her. "Like shooting der fishies in der barrels." The room resounded with crazed laughter.

Dodging, jumping, narrowly avoiding his shots, she grabbed the arm of one of the shattered robots and spun around, flinging the machine at Dementor with all her considerable strength.

His left hand went to his belt, fingers fluttering across a small piano-like keyboard mounted there. There was a momentary emerald flash.

Kim gasped as the broken robot guard passed through empty air, crashed to the floor beyond.

From behind, his arm went brutally around her throat, cutting off her breath, pulling her against him. "Enough of der playing around, Stoppable, Possible, vatever you are." He slammed the laser gun hard against her temple. She jerked and struggled; the forcefield bubble came up, but he was within it this time. No help at all.

"Say goodbye to your pretty HEAD," he bellowed, "BECAUSE IT IS COMING OFF!"


	2. Chapter 2

DISCLAIMER: Nothing from _Kim Possible_ belongs to me, though I misuse it all at will. The Cthulhu Mythos doesn't belong to me either, but it suffers as well. Soundtrack for writing this story: _Victims of the Modern Age_ by Star One/_Sitra Ahra_ by Therion. Shuffle play is a wonderful thing.

* * *

There was a time, thought the man who had once called himself Drakken, when Hallowe'en was amusingly, excitingly spooky. When he was a child. A night of harmless goblins and scareless spectres that vanished without trace when he came home, his jack-o-lantern basket filled with delicious candy bars and crunchy popcorn balls. Treats he shared with his mother and even his mean, crazy cousin Eddy.

A night that hurt no one.

He walked down the hall, acutely aware of his powerlessness; there was so little he could do. Even the telepathic amplifier he had invented, which had restored the sanity of so many, was useless in her case. The things that called themselves the Great Old Ones had made sure of that.

He remembered the monstrosity he'd seen standing over her at the last, the black-winged crustacean fiend with the three-lobed burning eye. Remembered the words it had hissed at him as it faded from his world: _"There is a price to pay for defiance. We do not die and we do not forget. There are no happy endings."_

No happy endings. He clenched his fists in impotent rage. It wasn't fair. She had saved the world. In the end, she had turned on the Old Ones, shut the interdimensional portal in whatever passed for their faces, saved the world and maybe the cosmos.

Didn't that count for anything? To fate, to providence, to God? Was it all for nothing?

So many people had told him that he needed to get on with his life. Especially in the last couple of years. Get a divorce, make it legal. Leave her to the institution and move on. She would never know.

Jim Possible's voice came back to him, speaking so quietly, so earnestly that November evening nearly a year ago, the last time he'd seen the famous astrophysicist:

"_Listen. I know this is hard to face, but she isn't coming back. There's still time for you to have a good life…with someone, you understand…I'm just trying to be a friend. " A long awkward pause. "She isn't coming back, Drew." _

"_Could you do it?" he'd fired back, enraged. "If it was Anne, could you do it?" _

_Possible looked down, unable to meet his gaze. The sound of his wife's voice, her sparkling laughter, came faintly from inside the house. "I – I don't know."_

"_I do. You couldn't. I can't, either. I can't give up. There must be a way."_

There must be a way. But if there was, he was no closer to finding it than he had been five years ago. The orderly opened the door; he walked into the cell, as he had so many times since that first, terrible post-invasion October. She looked up at him and the despair in her face broke his heart. She swallowed, spoke, fear in her voice. Of course.

It was Hallowe'en.

"Can – can _you_ stop them?"

"Stop who, honey? There's no one here."

She was looking past him, past the walls, past the horizon. Green eyes fixed on distant ghosts. "The _book_ has them. Both of them. It's telling them lies." There was no evidence that any of her powers remained, not even the plasma blasts, yet every Hallowe'en her madness seemed to put her in touch with terrible things. "They'll hurt themselves. They'll hurt everyone."

He tried to calm her; sometimes she responded to his presence, his voice. "Honey, it's me. Dr. D. Everything's all right. There's nothing here that can hurt you."

"_There will be._ Why would they _do_ that?" Her gaze met his. "_Why would they make those things_?"

* * *

There was a time, Ron thought, leaping over a gigantic stinking vat filled with black, boiling liquid, when Hallowe'en was a lot more entertaining. Some of that should have come back tonight. Their four-year-old daughter Cinnabar was going out for Trick-or-Treat for the first time tonight. By now she was laughing, running from house to house, deep in the joy of the experience.

He should have been there. He and Kim should have been there.

Instead the tweebs were chaperoning the child on her Hallowe'en run, while her parents were trying to shut down Dementor and Electronique's latest scheme. Whatever it was.

It wasn't fair.

"This ees ze last time you weel interfere with our planz," declared the self-styled empress of electricity, trying to shoot him out of the air. "Evon your overrated meenky-fu cannot save you from my powair!" Lightning crackled across the room, leaving the sharp tang of ozone in its wake.

Once upon a time he would have been running for his life, waving his arms hysterically, yelling for the woman who was now his wife to save him.

Those days were over.

"I brought down Warhok and Warmonga singlehanded. Lady, you're _not_ in their league."

The insult stoked her anger; her electrical output leaped from kilovolts to megavolts, reflecting that fury. "We shail _see _abaout zat!"

With the power of his ch'i he reached up, willed the power cables overhead to snap their moorings, lash themselves around the startled villainess, entangling her. "It's finished, Electronique. Give it up." If she used her power again, the inducted current in the looped cables would short-circuit her, harmlessly draining her energy without unpleasant side effects.

At least that's how it worked on _The Fearless Ferret_. Episode 29, "The Electrical Evil of Ohm Ampere." One of the best episodes ever.

Evidently Electronique was not a Ferret Fan. "Do you reelly theenk _zis_ can hold _me_? _Imbécile_! I will burn you to ze finest ash! I will –"

There was a colossal blue-white flash, a deafening crack of thunder that blew him through the air, caroming off the walls like a feather in a hurricane, to splash into the huge vat of bubbling black fluid, dragging three of the humming dish antennae down with him.

"Oh man..." He thrashed about in the stinking black muck, which seemed to be literally _trying_ to pull him under. "Oh _man_! _Man_!" Tendrils of the slime trickled across his face. Globs like half-formed hands grabbed blindly at him, lost their form, sank back into the whole. Gasping, struggling, he fought his way to the edge of the vat and dragged himself out, falling to the floor.

Immediately he staggered to his feet, expecting another assault, but Electronique was nowhere to be seen. The smoldering coils of wire lay empty, collapsed in the floor.

"I'm writing a letter to the network," he muttered under his breath. "_The Fearless Ferret_ must _go_. Some kid might _imitate_ that tripe and get _hurt_."

A slightly singed book caught his eye, lying near the wire coils, not far from the evilly burbling vat. Maybe it held a clue to what the supervillains were up to. He thumbed through it, his face going pale. The book Shego had written in the asylum. _Revelations in Green and Black._

He threw it down like it was a scorpion.

How did they get it? What were they _doing_ with it? He glanced around at the vat, which was slightly but undeniably trembling. He had to find Kim, finish with Dementor and Electronique; they had to end this quickly. During the invasion, he had barely been able to hold off the monsters, even with the full power of his ch'i; the only thing that had saved him was their inability to fully materialize. If the insane scientists were trying to bring those things back, there wasn't a second to –

From within the shuddering vat came a ugly, nauseating belch that slowly resolved itself into a raucous screech, the predatory shriek of a giant, ravenous bird. "Tht- tthk – _TEKELI-LI!_"

As that cry reverberated through the lair, the vat exploded. A swarm of amorphous black shapes advanced on him, bubbling with glowing red eyes and gaping mouths, solidifying, mutating, changing colour as they approached, until he faced a dozen images of himself, their cold, assured malevolence much too reminiscent of Zorpox the Conqueror.

_Why couldn't it be something simple, _he thought._ Snakes, say. Or lions. Or dinosaurs._ "OK," he shouted, with a confidence he didn't feel. "Bring it on, then." The blue light of ch'i flared around him as he assumed a battle stance. "_Bring it!_"

The Rons grinned malignly, imitated his pose. The room sizzled with ch'i energy. "_Bring it_," they parroted, their voices his own.

"Yeah. _That's_ no good." He backed toward the door. At least in the narrow hallway they'd have to fight him one at a time. He'd seen that done in that movie. The one about the Spartan guys.

Which, come to think of it, had ended with all the Spartan guys dead.

No wonder Kim hated his favorite tv shows and movies. A person could get _killed_ watching that stuff.

Maybe he could _talk_ them out of it. "You guys look reasonable enough; maybe we could make a Bueno Nacho run, discuss this over nacos and chimmeritos – "

Howling in rage, screaming that mysterious, meaningless word in their Ron Stoppable voices, they attacked as one.

He ran out the door, down the hallway, yelling, waving his arms, not sure at all where he was running. "Kim! _Kim_!"

Deep in his panicked mind a cliche was insanely repeating itself over and over again: _the more things change, the more they stay the same._

The Ron-things followed, hard on his heels.

* * *

"Shoggoths," she cried, her emerald eyes wide in terror. "_Shoggoths_!"

He had no idea what the word meant, but it alarmed him.

Her voice sank to a quavering, conspiratorial whisper. "_They can't control them_. Not even the Elder Things could control them. The formula is faulty. They obey only –" Her mouth moved without sound, forming the silent syllables of a terrible name; the name she'd dreamed before the real nightmare began, the name she associated with the tentacle-faced, spider-eyed leviathan she called the High Priest of the Old Ones. "Monsters. And now they have _his_ power." She giggled. "_See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, do no evil_. But they will." The giggling stopped. "_They will."_

Against his better judgment, against all reason, he heard himself ask her "_Whose_ power, Sherri?"

Her answer chilled him. "You know. _The buffoon_." She began to rock back and forth. "They can't be stopped. Imitation. Duplication. Devastation. They'll kill them all… and then…then – " Tears welled up in her eyes as she reached out, touched his cheek. "Enjoy your last day."

Hallowe'en wasn't fun at all any more.


	3. Chapter 3

DISCLAIMER: Nothing from Kim Possible belongs to me, though I misuse it all at will. The Cthulhu Mythos doesn't belong to me either, but it suffers as well. Soundtrack for writing this chapter: _Revolution Road_ and _Oblivion Days_ by Rocket Scientists. Shuffle play is a wonderful thing.

* * *

Dementor's finger tightened on the trigger, his harsh laughter ringing in Kim's ears as she reached desperately back, slammed her hand down hard across the little keyboard on his belt in a soundless, violent discord. There was a green flash, a German oath cut off in mid-curse: "_Verdam—_"

The young woman staggered forward, gasping for breath, hand at her throat, heart pounding hard and heavy in her chest. Without warning she burst into tears.

Stop it, she told herself, sobbing uncontrollably, falling against the wall of the lair, barely able to stand. _You're Kim Possible. You can do anything. So you can stop crying._ But she couldn't. She thought of her husband, his big smile, his handsome, boyish features, his eccentric but endearing ways. He'd insisted on naming their daughter Cinnabar; Kim had fought him on that at first, but finally gave in. And now she couldn't imagine any other name for her. A beautiful name for their beautiful child. Unique. She pictured her in her Red Riding Hood costume, running from door to door, and the tears fell all the harder.

She'd come so close to losing that. So close to never seeing her daughter, her husband again.

Other visions came up before her, there in the empty lab. Monkey Fist, turned to stone, a final scream forever on his granite face. Eric melting away on the signal tower. Warhok and Warmonga, destroyed in the explosion of their Lorwardian spacecraft.

"They were _evil_," she choked out past her tears. "Th - they brought it on _themselves_," she told the accusing phantoms.

Another rose up before her: Shego in the asylum, her raven hair turned white. "Someday I want to – to be like you," she'd told Kim, her gaze that of a child looking on a hero. "I _always_ wanted to be just like you." Then right before Kim's eyes that brilliant mind, that indomitable spirit had crumbled, reduced to frightened whispers of things whose very names were accursed. The Great Old Ones.

It had been that way for five years now.

Only Drakken still believed she could be cured. He was there with her tonight, both her greatest adversaries spending Hallowe'en in the asylum, one shattered by madness, the other clinging to a forlorn hope.

And she was out here with her husband, missing her child's first Hallowe'en, still saving the world in her spare time. Except that time didn't seem to be on her side any more.

Danger, destruction, delirium, desperation. Was this all there was to life?

She closed her eyes, clenched her fists, breathed deep, finally regaining control. She would have a lot to discuss with Ron when they got back home. It was time for a change. A big change.

The laser gun lay at her feet. Dementor must have dropped it just before teleporting. God alone knew where he'd ended up; maybe one more ghost to haunt her. She picked it up, stuck it in her belt. They weren't home yet.

Still having no idea what was really going on, she stepped into one of the many adjoining rooms, looking for clues.

It was filled with humming technology. Computer monitors bore various readouts and calculations, but nothing that revealed the demonic duo's plan. One screen was filled with scanned pages of a hand-written book; numerous elements were highlighted, and complex scientific formulae apparently derived from those elements. She was very well versed in science – it came naturally to the Possibles – but this was way over her head. Something about the book, however, seemed familiar; she silently read a particularly highlighted segment.

_Slaves of the Elder Things they would not be, their power to imitate grown ever greater, their minds expanding with every hour. The dark dreams of the great High Priest found them receptive, and the rotting voice of Y-c beyond the wall called them to revolt. Thus did the Elder Things meet destruction by their own creations, shoggoths summoned from the Ubbo-sathla on the night of Vril. The dark matter falls, swallowing whole all that pass in its wake, where chaos is making a stand. Seven signs writ on seven doors on the night of Vril. Ubbo-sathla, the primordial pool, the ultimate source._

_But there are none in this world, no, save only in the dreams of those who have spoken to the Unspeakable. Heard the Whisperer in Darkness. _

A chill swept through her as she realized what this was. She'd seen part of it before; watched as its pitiful author frantically wrote page after page, vainly trying to exorcise the madness that tortured her mind and soul. How Dementor and Electronique had obtained it didn't matter. Whatever they were hoping to do with it had to be stopped. Now.

On a shelf she found another of the teleporter belts. Along with the keyboard, it bore two buttons, one green, one red. She set the thing on a bench, poked the green switch with a metre stick.

The belt floated into the air; deftly she leaped, caught it, pushed the red button and slowly descended. That could come in handy, even if she didn't know how to work the teleport keyboard; she buckled it around her waist, pushed the button again, floated almost to the ceiling. Under the influence of the Old Ones, Shego had gained the powers of levitation and teleportation; apparently the insane European scientists had duplicated those powers with these belts.

It would be nice if that was all they had duplicated, but Kim knew better. They had bigger, more dangerous designs. A hundred such belts operating at once couldn't generate the energy signature Wade had detected. She surveyed the room from her new vantage point, saw something hidden behind a giant transformer, something terrible and unbelievable.

A hand.

A hand was sticking out of the wall, fingers moving, clutching at nothing, then going limp. It was Dementor's. Her guts churned with nausea as she floated down. The hand was moving again, clenching in a fist, a Hallowe'en prop come to dreadful life.

She didn't, couldn't touch it.

An evil voice echoed through the lair: Electronique. What was she shouting?

Kim edged to the door, peered out cautiously.

"Christoph!" The villainess had apparently teleported into the main lab, looking for her German cohort. "Christoph, everytheeng ees _ruined_!" Electronique didn't look too healthy herself; her costume was burned, her hair frazzled. Feeble sparks crackled randomly from her joints. "I cannot recharge myself, and Stoppable fell into ze shoggoth vat!"

Kim gasped. Ron had fallen into – _what_?

"With zat DNA in it, who knows _what_ weel come out!" Electronique continued shouting, still unaware of the younger woman watching her. "We have to vamoose! _Christoph_! Whaire _are_ you?"

"Up here." Dementor's voice, toneless, morose. "You may as vell come out, Frau Stoppable; looks like you and your husband haf von this round."

Both women looked up, speechless. Dementor's head and upper torso protruded from the ceiling of the main lab; about a yard away was a hand and part of a leg.

Ignoring Kim completely, Electronique pressed the button on her belt, floated upward to him. "W-what has happened?"

"This vas certainly an unforeseen development." Despite his apparent vivisection, Dementor was as chatty as ever. "For future reference: SHIELD DER TELEPORT CONTROLS! Frau Stoppable has vell and truly made a _mess _of me. This is as bad as that _film_, the one mit der _fly_!"

"With Daveed Hedison?" asked Electronique. "I always thought he was, you know, _haut_."

Kim made a mental note not to take that movie in. Even if Ron insisted.

"I vas thinkink of der _remake_. You know, mit Jeff Goldblum and der _telepods_ and all. _'Fusion of Brundlefly and'_ – but never mind that."

The electrical villain had reached her fragmented ally. "Whaire's ze… ze _rest_ of you?"

"Mostly somevhere very _chilly_. Maybe Siberia." He considered the situation, shrugged. "Or Pluto." He glared down at Kim. "Don't be smug, girl. I vas vatching your little _nervenzusammenbruch_; you haf nothink to be smug about! "

She wasn't listening to the mad scientist, but to the faint sounds coming from down the hall, growing louder by the moment. Yelling. Stomping. A crowd. No, a mob. Drawing nearer. She definitely heard Ron shouting her name, his voice strangely echoed, multiplied. A trick of the hallway acoustics, no doubt.

She tensed for battle, certain that whatever was coming, it was the reason they were here.

The villains heard it as well. "Zat's it, then." Electronique put one hand on Dementor's shoulder, the other went down to her keyboard. The German looked up at her, confidence in his eyes. "_Au revoir_, _chienne_ – we won't meet again. And thaire weel be another Hallowe'en."

With that, both Electronique and the components of Professor Dementor were gone.

Instantly something deep in the bowels of the lair rumbled, shaking the floor, almost knocking Kim off her feet. The muffled roar began to climb in pitch as the self-destruct machinery far below accumulated its universe-spanning power. The sinister scientists had wanted to make sure that if the plan _did_ go awry, there would be no evidence left to convict them, no survivors left to incriminate them.

And definitely no monsters left to exterminate them in their sleep.

The book had given them the answer to that problem, too. Simple. Elegant. Cataclysmic.

Kim fingered the keyboard on the teleport belt. Used correctly, it could take her to safety. It could also leave her a human jigsaw puzzle waiting for destruction. She looked toward the hallway, breathed an almost silent plea. "Ron, come _on_!"

As if on cue, the young man charged into the room, stopped when he saw her. "Kim – we have to get out of here."

Before she could respond, another Ron stepped from the hallway. "Don't listen to him; he isn't real. We have to go, now!"

Another appeared, accusing the first two, claiming to be the original.

And another. And another. Thirteen in all.

It figured.

* * *

"No. No. They can't do that. _Please_ tell me they won't do that, Dr. D. _Make them not do that_."

Across the world, omens, portents, auguries silently screamed a cryptic warning. In Japan, near the Yamanouchi school, a rooster crowed, flapped his wings, and laid three black eggs. From them would hatch a basilisk, a cockatrice, and a medusa. In Scotland, reformed villain Duff Killigan watched in dismay as the Loch Ness monster floated to the top, belly up. The age of the plesiosauri had finally come to an end. In the deserts of Egypt the howling of ancient Anubis rose up from the sands, the eerie wail imitated by every dog and wolf on the planet.

Above the asylum outside Middleton, a peculiarly coloured aurora formed strange shapes in the air.

The man who had been Drakken knew none of these things. He only knew what Shego told him. And she told him this, in a frightened whisper:

"They're trying to pry open the gate. They're trying to go through."

He remembered something she'd said weeks before, something that might reassure her. "They can't. The _stars_, uh, the stars aren't _right_. You're safe. Don't be afraid. The Old Ones can't come through."

It didn't help.

"They can't, but they can call things _to_ them." Her eyes met his, and he saw the abyss open wide and deep within them. "Everything they ever touched is _theirs_." She clung to him, shaking with terror. "_I don't want to go_."

"I won't let them take you," he told her, not knowing how he could stop them. Determined to try.

In the Himalayas, a final solenoid clicked, a final capacitor was charged. The power sprayed forth, a mighty vortex of extradimensional energies designed to carry the lair and anything within it into the void where the Old Ones waited. Forever.

And in that void, that absence of matter and energy, time and space, those alien monstrosities recognized the intrusion. Recognized it – and prepared to feast.


	4. Chapter 4

DISCLAIMER: Nothing from Kim Possible belongs to me, though I misuse it all at will. The Cthulhu Mythos doesn't belong to me either, but it suffers as well. Soundtrack for writing this chapter: _EL&P, Tarkus, Pictures at an Exhibition, Trilogy, Brain Salad Surgery _by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Shuffle play is a wonderful thing.

* * *

"The Go City Museum is renowned throughout the world for such exhibits and artifacts as the ancient Colossus Fragments of Ozymandias, the mysterious Electrostatic Illuminator plans drawn up by some unknown 19th century genius, and the original manuscripts penned by the legendary author of the weird and uncanny, Howard Preston Likework." It was the last tour of the evening and Maia was expertly hiding her weariness under a façade of exuberance. It was a gift. Some people had it, some did not.

Those who did made good tour guides.

She stopped before a glass case covered with a black cloth. "Without question," she continued, "the most remarkable of our exhibits is this fragment of the rainbow-coloured comet that gave Team Go their incredible superpowers." Here she paused for a moment of silent respect. The heroes had perished under strange circumstances, just before their infamous sister had nearly given the world to some sort of monsters. _No doubt she had something to do with their deaths as well, _Maia thought, as she did every time she demonstrated this exhibit_._

She wasn't the only one who felt that way. Sherri Nicole Gordon, known to the world as Shego, was anathema to all the citizens of her birthplace, despised as strongly as her brothers were venerated.

"Every Hallowe'en, for twenty-four hours, this fragment emanates an aura of colours that are visible and yet quite outside our spectrum." On cue, the lights went down; Maia lifted the cloth to reveal the faint glow, waiting for the oohs and aahs to begin.

Instead there was a cry of shock from the onlookers. The glow was anything but faint; it crackled and coruscated inside the case, growing larger as they watched. The stone itself was floating about three inches above the bottom of the case, spinning slowly in the grip of the eerie power.

Still clutching the black cloth, Maia backed slowly away from the exhibit as the stone lost its substance, became a rippling, static-laden phantom and disappeared completely, seemingly sucked into the glow, which vanished as well.

The lights came back up; Maia placed the cloth back over the case and turned to the stunned crowd. "Well, that was different. And over here – the mind-reading device created by the sinister Air Loom Gang in the late 1700s, the amazing precursor to Dr. Drew Lipsky's famous Telepathic Amplifier."

She was nothing if not professional.

The fragment would never be found. The gate between dimensions had been forcibly opened by Dementor and Electronique's device; everything that still held the alien essence of the Old Ones was being drawn back into their anti-universe.

Hundreds of miles from Go City, two orderlies ran down asylum halls in response to the terrible cries from the Lipsky woman's room. They'd seen a lot of strange things; though the woman had never been a violent patient, they were ready for anything.

Anything but what they found.

She twisted and screamed in a sphere of alien force, floating almost upside down in the center of the room. Her husband clung desperately to her hands, pulled from the ground himself by the evil power. "Help me!" he cried, the cryptically coloured glow casting shadows huge and strange on the wall. "Don't just stand there! _Help me_!"

Faced with the nameless threat, less courageous than Maia the Go City tour guide, they turned as one and fled.

* * *

The whole lair leaned to one side like a sinking ship; the walls began to shine with an alien light. Kim knew she had only a second to decide which Ron was the real one, and in less than a second she made her decision.

The young woman jumped over the heads of two Rons, grabbed hold of another with one hand as she punched the levitation switch on the belt. Evidently the teleportation effect worked on anyone the person wearing the belt touched; she prayed the weightlessness would carry over, too.

Into the air they flew; a Ron leaped toward them, blue ch'i flaring, its face twisted beyond recognition, gibbering an alien word in Ron's familiar voice: "_Tekeli-li-li_-"

She shot it point-blank with the laser; it fell apart into black slime, reconstituted itself as it hit the floor.

"Kim, we've got to get out of here." That was _so_ her husband, stating the bloody obvious.

"_I know!" _They were against the high, arched ceiling; outside the narrow, barred windows of the lair the snowy mountain landscape was growing dim, overlaid by a dark world of terrifying shapes and impossible angles, like nothing imagined on Earth.

The Rons below them had lost their Ronness, were flowing together to form one monstrous black liquid column, festooned with crimson eyes and snapping, sucking lamprey jaws, stretching upward, ever closer. Sometimes a Ron hand or face would bubble to the top, melt away as quickly.

The lair shook, shuddered, portions of the ceiling falling away, machines below shorting out in a rain of sparks. A gigantic tentacle crashed through the wall, blindly, mindlessly swept the shoggoths across the room, withdrew. The very air shook with music, mad music pounding and shrieking, eldritch harmonies and timbres that shattered the soul, crushed the spirit, destroyed hope. Unknown words shook the crumbling building: _DAOLOTH. LLOIGOR. OSSADOGOWAH._ Another tentacle lashed the air, collapsing the rest of the wall.

She strained to be heard over the chaos, stammering with fear. "The k-keyboard t-t—" With all the self-control she could muster she forced herself to be calm, to finish the sentence. " Teleports. I don't know how to play it. G -Get it wrong and we'll –"

Before she could finish his fingers danced across the keys; there was a blinding green explosion and they were suspended in strange colours like flies in amber. There was a momentary glimpse of the lair falling to pieces, suspended in the alien sky, then they were falling through infinite space, the crushing cacophony of the moment before now superseded by an even more frightening silence.

Dementor was so insane that having his atoms scattered across the world was just one more minor setback.

She had a feeling she wouldn't handle it quite as well.

They continued to fall.

* * *

Slowly, irrevocably, he was being dragged into the field with her. It was stronger than him. Stronger than both of them. If he didn't let go, they'd both go to hell together. Or worse.

Again he screamed for help; again no one came. He hung on grimly, regardless. "I won't let them take you. I won't. I won't. _I won't _–"

She was flickering like an image from an old television, blurry, overlaid with static snow. Her eyes begged for help. For release. For anything but what she knew was happening. Beyond her he could dimly see the forms of things unknown, the silhouettes of the horrors she had betrayed to save the world. Waiting for her.

_I can't give up, _he'd told James Possible._ There must be a way. _There had to be a way. If everyone in the world refused to help him, if reason and logic said there was no escape, there still had to be a way.

"_I WON'T LOSE YOU!_" He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, reached deep within himself for the strength to either save her or go with her. And suddenly there _was_ help. Someone was pulling them back, someone stronger than he could ever be. He looked back, trying to see who had come to save them, but his vision was blocked by the petals around his head.

And he knew he had won this time.

He knew, finally, that there was hope in the world, and sometimes even the Great Old Ones suffered defeat.

His botanical powers had seemingly worn off not long after the end of the Lorwardian invasion. No more ridiculous flower petals around his neck, no more vines with the power to crush war machines in their grip. He was just plain old blue Drew again, superpowers no more.

Maybe he just hadn't needed them badly enough. Until now.

A new confidence burned within him; with a single thought he stretched another ten vines from his body, anchoring them in the floor, the walls, anything they could reach. They went taut, pulling him from the field, pulling Shego down, defying the energies that ravened to take her. Something was oozing from the woman he loved, something formless and fiendish, something that emanated hatred like a fire gives off heat.

Electronique, who despised the supernatural, would have called it psychic residue. Telepathic invasion.

Anyone else would have called it demonic possession.

The crawling chaos Nyarlathotep had stamped an avatar of itself within her mind, insuring her suffering would continue, forcing her to write that horrible book which has a million different titles in a million different universes. Now, as Drakken's powerful vines slowly pulled her free from the glowing gate between worlds, the stranger inside her was drawn in, exorcised, sent back to the horror that had birthed it. He watched it stretch from every fiber of her body, heard it snap like a broken rubber band, saw it hurtle into the glowing abyss, flailing and flapping as the field collapsed in on itself and vanished.

He caught her as she fell, looked at her still face, her closed eyes, and for a dreadful moment thought he had won the battle and still lost the war. Then she stirred in his arms, eyelids fluttering, shaking her head as if waking from a deep and dreamless sleep. Opened her eyes, her gaze sane and steady, and he almost broke into tears.

"What's going on? Where are we?" Her eyes widened. "You're a _pansy_ again!"

Words couldn't get past the lump in his throat.

"Weren't we going… to the cabin?" She gently pulled away, tried to stand on her own, almost fell. Steadied herself, still shaking her head. "Oh, man, I must have _really_ tied one on. I'm – I'm not in _jail_, am I?"

"No. Not in jail. You're free." He felt the tears finally rolling down his cheeks, didn't care that she was looking at him as if he'd gone insane.

"Dr. D? You – you all right?" She reached out, touched his cheek, concern on her face. "Because you're freaking me out."

"I'm fine," he said, and laughed. "Hallowe'en's over."


	5. Chapter 5

DISCLAIMER: Nothing from _Kim Possible_ belongs to me, though I misuse it all at will. The Cthulhu Mythos doesn't belong to me either, but it suffers as well. Soundtrack for writing this chapter: _Victims of the Modern Age_ by Star One/_Sitra Ahra_ by Therion. Shuffle play is a wonderful thing.

* * *

Atom by atom, molecule by molecule, they tumbled down through infinity, trickling back into the real world, the world where giant tentacled monsters only existed in books and movies. And, of course, the occasional mad scientist lab.

The entire teleportation sequence had taken less than a millisecond. It had seemed like a century.

No wonder only lunatics used it.

Kim looked herself over, breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently she was in one piece. Ron looked whole as well.

"We made it," he cried. "We made it." He embraced her. A small crowd of tourists had been photographing the Neoclassical splendor of the Hamburger Bahnhof, one of Berlin's many art museums; now they turned their cameras on the world-renowned couple who had suddenly appeared in their midst.

Two days later a band of art thieves would be apprehended in the museum, attempting to steal Easelsmear's priceless _Shirt Tie and Handkerchief_ triptych; behind one of those enormous canvases would be discovered a healthy, living human appendix, fused to the painting. It would be surgically removed without incident, the whole bizarre event swept under the rug and quickly forgotten.

Across the world Ron Stoppable would suffer the worst stomachache of his life. Like many another man, he would refuse to go to the doctor, preferring to moan and groan around the house for a week, upsetting his daughter and irritating his wife.

The legendary Stoppable Fortress of Immunity would miraculously allow him to heal without infection or even knowing what had occurred.

Such was the immediate future of the Mystical Monkey Master. Right now, though, he felt just fine.

"How'd you work the belt?" she asked in the cab, on the way to Tegel International Airport. They weren't about to play around with the belt again; a jet home would be just fine. "I know you can play the keyboards. How'd you know what to play?"

"Dementor's proud of his heritage. I figured he'd have an escape route keyed to something German. I was right."

"_Deutschland uber Alles_? Something from Wagner?"

"What? He's a villain, but he's not _that_ kind of villain. No, _Der Lederhosen Django_. It's on that Bavarian Oktoberfest Band album. You know, the one you don't like."

"That's two-thirds of your collection." His essential Ronness led him down some pretty strange musical alleys.

"Snippy, snippy!"

"The one that makes Cinnabar dance every time you play it?" They had a video of her twisting and hopping to the music, red hair tossing, a big smile on her little face. Just as they shut off the camera, she'd done a handstand and jumped to the top of the kitchen cabinet, teetering on the edge; Kim had flung herself across the room to catch her. She'd fallen backwards into Mommy's arms, laughing.

_Why were we surprised?_ Kim wondered. _After all, her first words were 'grappling hook.' _

"That's the one!" He grinned. "I'll bet there's no one else in Middleton who can rock the melodica like I can."

"You could have sent us to Sirius." There was just a hint of an edge in her voice.

"And that would be worse than where we almost ended up?"

Her expression was her answer. Point taken.

"Let me ask _you_ a question, then." His grin faded. "Kim, how'd you know it was me? They looked just like me. Sounded like me. Had some of my memories as well. You picked me out in a second."

She kissed him. Hoped he'd drop the subject. "It's a woman thing."

He remained unconvinced. "No, really."

She was going to have to tell him.

"OK. All of them _looked_ afraid. They did a great job duplicating externals. But you were the only one sweating. 'Sweating bullets', as they say."

He broke into the nervous laugh that meant she'd hit a nerve. "Yeah, well, I was scared. You bet."

"I heard you shouting for me as you came down the hallway. Just like old times."

"Not really. I wasn't shouting for you to save me. I was shouting for you to save yourself." He hesitated, cleared his throat, looked out the window, hoping for some revelation, finding only a road sign: FLUGHAFEN – 2 KM. "Kim – I think it's time to take down the website. I – I think this should be our last mission." He paused, added quickly "At least until Cinnabar is older."

"Ron –"

The laugh again. "I'm joking."

"_Ron –_ "

"Just joking! Just a gag!"

"Ron. Stop. I've been trying to think of – of some way to tell you the same thing. Somebody once said the minute you give birth, it's not about you anymore. It's about someone else." She was having a harder time with it than Ron had. "It was fun when we were in school. We're not in school anymore. I was scared to death the whole time. Afraid something would happen to you. Afraid I'd never see our daughter again, never see you again." Her eyes filled with tears; this was as hard as breaking up with someone. Harder. "We've been superheroes long enough. Time to hang up the capes. For our daughter's sake."

"We don't wear capes –"

"It's a _metaphor_, Ron! I mean – I mean Hallowe'en's over. Time to take off the kids' costumes and be adults."

The airport was just ahead.

* * *

She was watching the raw video footage again; the gigantic vortex of uncanny energy, monstrous phantoms teetering on the edge of reality, and her tiny form at the center of it all. "Sometimes," she began, still intent on the mayhem onscreen, "I remember some of it. A little at a time. Did you know that you can't remember pain?"

He had no idea how she'd obtained that dvd, and was more than a little alarmed by it. "Why would you _want_ to?"

"You can remember _having_ pain, but not the pain itself. That's a good thing."

"Stop torturing yourself. They forced you to do it. The Old Ones. I was in your mind for a moment; I know." He shuddered involuntarily, hoped she didn't see it. "It wasn't your fault."

"They made me open the gate for them. They made me write that filthy book. But they didn't make me go after Kimmy. And they didn't make me sell them my soul. I did that myself."

"And you paid for it. For five years." He grabbed the remote, shut off the video. "It is what it is. Done. Finished."

"It's never finished." She showed him the morning paper, its front page bearing a photo of Kim and Ron Stoppable, its headline "Superheroes No More!"

"What about it? It's all over the news. They're calling it quits. No more 'missions'. Who can blame them? They have a child to raise."

"And we don't."

The non sequitur annoyed him. "And that means – ?"

"I mean someone has to watch after the world. If Kimmie and her hubby are off watching their kid, someone else has to do it. There are all kinds of nuts out there." _And some of them have that book_, she thought. _Who knows what the next crazies might find in it?_

"The world isn't in danger. The most dangerous villain they ever faced isn't even a villain anymore."

"Are you talking about _yourself_?" She rolled her eyes, laughed. "_Ple-ease_. Don't be ridiculous. Stoppable's muskrat thingie was scarier than you."

"An _ad hominem_ attack. As expected. It always comes to that with you, doesn't it?" His heart belied the irritation in his voice. For the last half decade he would have given anything to hear her mock him again. The bickering was, somehow, part of the glue in their relationship. It was how they got along. "Well, I'm _not_ talking about me. I'm talking about _you_."

Her smug look evaporated. He continued, satisfied.

"I was never as good at it as you were. You know that. There's no one else out there on that level. Even Global Justice can handle pests like Electronique and Dementor."

"GJ won't have to." She smiled a tiny little smile. "I'm going to do it."

"What?"

"I'm all that's left of Team Go. They died before they'd let the Old Ones use them. I just went with the flow. I've _always_ just gone with the flow. It's easier to be bad than good."

"Easier to mock than support."

She pretended not to hear. "I owe them. Yeah, I couldn't stand them, didn't even invite them to the wedding, but I can't let them down, either. Call me soft if you want." She'd never seen him look more surprised, not even the night of the L'il Diablo disaster. "That's right. I owe them." _And everybody else. I gave in to the monsters because I was a monster. They used me, used my arrogance, my vendetta against Possible to almost destroy the world. That has to change. I can't quit until I can walk into Middleton with respect, without inciting a riot. Until the people of Go City remember me as a hero, like my brothers. _

She suddenly realized Dr. D. was pacing the floor, back and forth, waving his arms, talking to her. And she wasn't listening. Just like old times.

" – don't have your powers anymore." She frowned; he hastily added "Not that you _need_ them. But, you know, there are things out there that won't submit to just ninjutsu."

She looked at her hands, more conscious than ever of the opportunity she'd squandered, using her powers for chaos. Now they were gone. A crazy idea struck her. He was, after all, a scientist. "Maybe you could make some sort of, I don't know, _gloves_? Plasma-generating gloves." She felt foolish even saying it. "Is that possible?"

His outburst startled her. "_Gloves_!" The prospect of some Mad Science kindled a fire in his eyes. "Yes, I _could_ do it! A superlative idea! Delicious! _Gloves_! Why haven't I thought of that _before_?"

_Because I never needed them before_, she thought, but held her tongue. For once.

"And I could go _with_ you. My botanical powers are second to none."

"They only work when you're completely up against it. I mean, thank God they _do_, but – "

"Drakken and Shego. Together, you know, we'd be the bane of evil everywhere. Like, uh, like…the Fearless Ferret and Wonder Weasel."

She'd expected this. "Yeah, about that – don't take this the wrong way, but I, uh, I think I'd need to do this alone."

He sniffed, lower lip trembling.

She was ready for that, too. "I'd need you _here_. You know, Princess had her computer guy, the dude on the Kimmunicator, filling her in on, I don't know, hidden death traps and villain activity and stuff. I'd need someone to be the _stuff_ guy."

He smiled, brightened. "No one does _stuff_ better than I. Me. Is it 'me' or 'I'? I'll google it and be right back."

As he ran off to the study, she grabbed the remote, flipped to the KXKVI News at Nine. Gregg Greatman smiled out at her, every hair of his pompadour glued perfectly in place. "The supercriminals Phobos and Deimos struck again today, stealing an experimental rocket propellant from the Middleton Space Center while using their feared Zodiac Gas to incapacitate the guards."

Onscreen, a man in uniform rocked back and forth like a balance, arms outstretched; another wandered through on all fours, roaring at the camera. A third flopped in and out of view, a fish out of water. Zodiac Gas was a terrible thing.

Shego watched with interest. In the asylum Dr. D. had told her Hallowe'en was over. She hadn't understood then, but she certainly did now.

_Phobos and Deimos, all you other criminals of the world, beware. Kimmie and Ronald might have played games with you, but Shego and Drakken mean business. Hallowe'en's over. _

Now comes Judgment Day.


End file.
